The popularity of electronic devices such as digital cameras and video recorders for taking photographic pictures or images has exploded in recent years. In order to obtain hard copies (i.e., photographs) of the digitized images stored using such devices, users of such devices will typically take such a device or a memory card from the device to a photo shop to download the digitized images stored in the device or its memory card. The user will then view the images at the photo shop and select which of the images stored in the device or its memory card to print. Alternatively, users of such devices can purchase relatively low cost photo printers and directly print their own pictures using such printers. To date, there have been two primary mechanisms to browse and select photos using these types of low cost photo printers.
The first mechanism is to utilize, for example, a color liquid crystal display (LCD) to browse and select images to be printed. The user can scroll through the images and mark or tag specific images for some later action, such as printing. This solution can be cumbersome for the user given the relatively small size of the display that typically comes with the printers. For many novice customers, this selection mechanism is also not intuitive.
The second mechanism is to print a thumbnail contact proof sheet of the images available. This printed proof sheet, which may also be referred to as an “index sheet,” has “Scantron” equivalent circles that the user shades and then consequently scans using a scan head that may be included with the printer. During the scan process, the printer recognizes where the user filled in the circles to tag images for some later action, such as printing. Although this provides a more natural user interface that people are accustomed to, the rescanning of the entire page is an additional step that is not intuitive or simple. Further, a scan head is needed with the printer in order to perform the scanning operation, thus adding to the overall costs of the printer.